Raju Pathak Cricket Academy, after suffering two defeats in the beginning, turned the tables on two fancied sides, former champions MCC (Red) (by 74 runs) and thrashed MCC (Yellow) by nine wickets to qualify for the semifinal knockout stage in the MCC (Elite) Pro-40 league, played at Oval Maidan here. RPCA now joins table topper B4S CC (8 points) and MCC (Red) and MCC (Yellow), all three on six points, .
Batting first, RPCA made challenging score of 207 with Tejas Chalke (51) and Ayush Kumar (47) being the top run-getters. But thanks to fine spin bowling by Shrihan Walawalkar (4/17), they dismissed “Red” for 133. Earlier RPCA had outplayed MCC (Yellow) by 9 wickets. Replying to “Yellow” 166, RPCA , thanks to Ravi Sharma’s superb unbeaten knock of 83, they were home with nine wickets in hand.
In the Plate division, Vihaan Jain’s allround show featured in Jwala Sports Foundation’s 53 runs win over MCC (Green). Vihaan scored 44 and then captured two wickets.
Brief scores: MCC Pro-40 (Elite) League: RPCA 207 all out (Tejas Chalke 51, Ayush Kumar 47; Anand Tripathi 3/37, Abhishek Sanale 2/19) bt MCC (Red) 133 all out (Suhail Ansari n.o. 31, Akansha Mishra 30; Shrihan Walawalkar 3/23, Shivank Tripathi 3/27) by 74 runs.
MCC (Yellow) 166 all out (Huzafa 29, Aryan Shukla 28; Shrihan Walawalkar 4/7) lost to RPCA 167/1 (Ravi Sharma n.o. 83, Sahil Barve 33; Arpan Das n.o. 31) by 9 wkts.
MCC Pro-40 (Plate) League: JSF 252/9 (Aniket Upadhayay 64, Vaibhav Pandey 48, Vihaan Jain 44; Sohan Chavan 3/58, Ritesh Pawar 2/36) bt MCC (Green) 199 all out (Soumya Singh 67; Dheeraj Paswan 4/40, Vihaan Jain 2/32) by 53 runs.
